唐章怀太子墓壁画《礼宾图》
Separation of Ownership and Use
I. What Do You Really Own?
China’s Seventy-Year Housing Right
In China today, a private individual may buy an apartment, live in it, sell it, rent it out, or pass it on to heirs. And yet, under Chinese law, the right attached to that apartment expires after seventy years.
This fact unsettles many people. It unsettles foreign observers, and it unsettles many Chinese themselves. What happens after seventy years? Does the home revert to the state? Does the family lose its shelter? Is private property ultimately insecure?
These anxieties arise not from legal ambiguity, but from a conceptual misunderstanding—specifically, a failure to distinguish ownership from right to use.
What a buyer acquires in China is not absolute ownership of land in the Lockean sense. Rather, one acquires a long-term, inheritable, legally protected right to use the land on which the apartment stands. This right is transferable, mortgageable, and enforceable. For all practical purposes of everyday life, it functions like ownership. But it is conceptually distinct.
Crucially, the expiration of the use right does not mean confiscation. Chinese law and administrative practice provide for renewal and extension. What is guaranteed is not metaphysical permanence of title, but continuity and security of use.
The confusion persists because many people—often unconsciously—import assumptions from a different tradition, one in which ownership is absolute, perpetual, and sacred. From that perspective, any time limit appears arbitrary or threatening. From the Chinese perspective, what matters is that people can live, work, plan, and build their lives with confidence.
This logic is not a modern invention. It reflects a principle articulated as early as the Book of Odes:
普天之下，莫非王土；
率土之滨，莫非王臣。
Often rendered as: Under Heaven, there is no land that is not the king’s; within the borders, there are none who are not his subjects.
Read superficially, this sounds like absolutism. Read institutionally, it expresses something subtler and more enduring: ultimate ownership is centralized, while use is distributed. The state (or ruler) holds ownership in reserve, not to micromanage daily life, but to guarantee order, continuity, and purpose. Individuals and households receive use rights that are meaningful, durable, and socially protected—without elevating private ownership into an untouchable metaphysical absolute.
This is the distinction at the heart of Separation of Ownership and Use (O&U).
II. Locke and the Sanctification of Ownership
To understand why the Chinese system feels so strange to many Western observers, one must turn to John Locke, the most authoritative figure in Western thinking about property.
In Locke’s account, ownership is natural, prior to the state, and morally foundational. Every person owns himself; by mixing one’s labor with nature, one converts use into ownership. Once ownership exists, it is perpetual and inviolable. Government does not grant property; it exists to protect it.
In this framework, use is not an independent right. The tenant’s right to live in an apartment is derivative, entirely dependent on the landlord’s ownership. The state has no standing to say: you may use but not own, or you may own only conditionally. Such distinctions are contractual conveniences, not foundational principles.
This is why Locke can explain leases and rents, but cannot accommodate a system in which use is primary and ownership is backgrounded. Once ownership is sanctified, separating it from use becomes conceptually unstable. To limit ownership is to violate natural right; to condition it is to invite tyranny.
The result is a property regime in which ownership is absolute, permanent, and sacred—and where any encroachment, however socially motivated, is treated with deep suspicion.
This philosophical inheritance continues to shape Western legal and political intuition, often invisibly. It is also the source of much misunderstanding when Western observers encounter Chinese institutions.
III. Why O&U Works: Coordination, Infrastructure, and “Not in My Backyard”
The separation of ownership and use is not merely a philosophical curiosity. It has profound practical consequences, especially in a world that demands large-scale coordination.
Consider a familiar American phrase: “Not in my backyard.”
If property is treated as absolute and inviolable, then every private owner holds a veto. One homeowner can block a railway, a power line, a housing project, or a renewable energy installation. Multiply this veto across millions of owners, and the result is paralysis.
You want high-speed rail in California? Not in my backyard.
You want solar farms? Not in my backyard.
You want denser housing near jobs? Not in my backyard.
When ownership is holy, nothing scales.
Under O&U, the logic is different. Ownership remains ultimate but abstract; use is concrete and negotiable. The state can coordinate long-term projects, reassign land use, compensate users, and pursue collective goals without endless litigation or permanent obstruction. Development proceeds through adjustment and compensation, not through absolute veto.
This does not mean arbitrary seizure. It means that private use rights are protected, but not elevated above all other social purposes. The result is a system capable of building infrastructure, upgrading industry, and adapting spatially at speed.
This principle—quietly embedded in Chinese institutions—helps explain China’s ability to build high-speed rail networks, dense urban housing, and large-scale renewable energy systems within decades rather than generations.
It also explains why the seventy-year housing right does not destabilize Chinese society. People trust continuity of use because continuity is institutional, not metaphysical. Stability lies in governance, not in sanctified titles.
Conclusion
The separation of ownership and use represents a deep civilizational alternative to Lockean property theory. It rejects neither markets nor private initiative, but it refuses to treat ownership as absolute, eternal, or sacred.
Instead, ownership is held in reserve; use is distributed for life and livelihood.
In a world facing coordination problems on an unprecedented scale—urbanization, energy transition, infrastructure renewal—this long-standing principle positions China remarkably well. What appears puzzling or unsettling when viewed through a Lockean lens reveals itself, on its own terms, as a coherent and powerful institutional logic.
In the next piece, we will return to a more abstract dimension of Chinese thought: the separation of birth and moral worth (B&M), and the implications this has for social mobility, fairness, and individual creativity.
Yego’s Chronicles 